Cinema’s favourite background viewing: the movie to appear in the most movies
Any movie that wants to secure the rights to include a popular song, reference copyrighted material in its dialogue or visuals, or incorporate footage from another film typically has to weave through the requisite red tape of obtaining the rights through legal means.
However, a simple oversight on an independent classic that completely changed the face of an entire genre eliminated those hoops from having to be jumped through, and as a result it’s appeared in the background of more movies than any other in the history of celluloid.
When writer, director, cinematographer, and editor George A. Romero was in the midst of shooting his feature-length debut Night of the Living Dead, he couldn’t have had any idea of just how far its impact and legacy would extend. After all, it was a schlocky horror being made for $125,000 produced by minor production company Image Ten and distributed by the distinctly B-tier Continental Distribution.
Of course, it ended up recouping its budget almost 300 times over at the box office, helped usher in the age of the shuffling zombie, became renowned as one of the greatest and most influential tales of terror ever told on the big screen, and established Romero as the godfather of the undead.
There was horror before Night of the Living Dead, and there was horror after Night of the Living Dead, such is the shadow Romero’s first film cast on the medium at large. Unfortunately, an administrative oversight did its long-term earning potential absolutely no favours whatsoever, although it did at least allow it to set a world record.
It may have been the most profitable horror flick in history at the time, but after the distributors had failed to re-register the copyright after its title was changed from Night of the Flesh Eaters, Night of the Living Dead entered the public domain from the second it was released into cinemas. It wasn’t until years later the mistake was discovered, with none of the original prints being protected by copyright.
In addition to opening the floodgates for hundreds of different versions created by countless companies flooding the home video market, it ensured that nobody would have to pay any rights or copyright fees to use footage from Night of the Living Dead in another production.
As a result, Romero’s first flirtation with flesh-eating zombies has been anointed by Guinness World Records as having set the benchmark for “most appearances by a movie in other movies,” with almost 130 films including sequences from Night of the Living Dead as of January 2024, and that number is only going to continue rising.
Needless to say, the same mistake wasn’t made again when Romero kept returning to his favoured playground for a decades-long association with the undead.
